Anton Chekhov explores the notion of poshlost in a number of stories, taking a lighter view in "The Siren's Song," for example, and a darker view in such stories as "In the Ravine" and "The Teacher of Literature." Poshlost, according to Nabokov, "is not only the obviously trashy but also the falsely important, the falsely beautiful, the falsely clever, the falsely attractive" (Nabokov 326). This study will argue that Chekhov, in these four works, treats poshlost not as something rare or extraordinary in human experience, but almost as if it were an inherent part of human nature. Only a few characters truly recognize poshlost, especially in themselves, and fewer still are able to avoid or transcend it in their own lives. The problem for the reader of Chekhov's stories is to discern the alleged poshlost (that is, the poshlost named by characters) and the true poshlost (which is often an element of those very same "anti-poshlost" characters).
The treatment of poshlost in "The Siren's Song" is indeed far more light-hearted than in the other three stories. As essentially comic as the author's portrait of the court denizens may be in this story, Chekhov leaves no doubt that their gross fixation with food is deserving of the term poshlost. The setting is the "conference-room" behind the "local court" where a group of judges and clerks and other court-workers have momentarily gathered to discuss dining while one judge finishes writing a dissenting opinion. The story is essentially a list of foods mentioned by the characters as the judge smears ink on page after page listening to that sumptuous list. Humanity in this story is reduced to creatures whose single concern, indeed, obsession, is the poshlost pleasure of stuffing one's face and filling one's gullet with the richest and among the most unhealthy foods possible:
"When you've eaten a little bite of [herring] with
. . . onion and with mustard sauce, immediately . . . have some...